Darkness
by gummibar
Summary: There were too many demons fluttering inside her head convincing her why everything was wrong and not enough angels telling her what was right. And because of that, she gave up. M for self-harm. Aelita-centric, Jeremie x Aelita.


After a while, darkness was the only thing she knew.

It didn't matter how bright it was outside, how much light surrounded her, because all she could see was darkness. She'd close the curtains and sit in the corner and make _sure _that all she could see was darkness. It became all she breathed, all she thought, all she felt.

And along with the darkness came the loneliness. The constant, agonizing feeling of being completely alone even in a room full of people. Even surrounded by her friends, the people she loved and knew loved her, yet in the end it never mattered. Sitting in her corner, she would curl up and wonder exactly what _did _matter.

Was she not just a burden to the lives of everyone around her? And now, _especially _now, with everyone else able to de-activate towers and with that skinny little blonde constantly helping at the computer, what was her purpose?

She often wondered. Too often. To the point where every little thought she had nagged and picked at the skin of her skull, leaving her to scratch at them like a plague or a pox—one with no cure, no treatment.

Save for one, small method.

One that made her abandon her sleeveless, denim jackets and purchase a wardrobe of long sleeves. Even in the summer when it was eighty degrees and her friends would joke and wonder if she was trying to be like Yumi, who always wore dark sweaters even under the blazing sun.

The relief was quick, but short lived. Sometimes she wondered if it really left her feeling better or if it only made her feel worse. After a while it wasn't something she even thought of at all. After a while, she wouldn't even realize she was doing it.

Each day was worse. Always harder than the last. Things were supposed to get better, and for a long time she really believed that. That was her thing, optimism. But then one day, she woke up and stared out of her window. One day, when the sky was almost black even at eight in the morning and rain was pounding against the roof, all she could do was sit there and wonder why. That day, she stopped believing. In anything at all, really. But most importantly, she'd stopped believing things would get better.

After all, XANA's return was proof of that. Tyrone's appearance was proof of that. Spectre's that resembled her lost mother and suspicious information of her father that nobody could figure out, not even Jeremie or Laura with as smart as she played herself out to be, was proof of that.

There were too many demons fluttering inside her head convincing her why everything was wrong and not enough angels telling her what was right. And because of that, she gave up. It wasn't that she wanted to die. That she would try to take her own life. It was more of, if she was to stand in the middle of the road and a truck came cruising her way, she wasn't sure if she'd move.

On her darkest days she would sit in that corner, hiding herself away from the sun because suddenly she no longer enjoyed its warmth and vibrancy, and on those days she'd want more than anything in the world to be in the arms of the ones she'd never see again. She wanted her father around to tell her more stories and teach her everything he knew. She wanted her mother around to be able to hold and rock her when she felt as awful as she did and to teach her about love and make her soup when she was sick because her daddy was _never_ a good cook.

She wanted all of the things she could never have again in her life, the things she had _barely _even had in the first place. And it wasn't fair. None of it was fair. She'd chant this inside her head when her eyes would start watering, because it most certainly was _not _fair. A mere child, forced to battle against the world with no one by her side to comfort her.

But realistically, she had plenty of people by her side. Sometimes it wasn't enough and still it didn't make her feel any better. The only thing she _had _felt as of late was the feeling of being numb. Of caring and not caring at the same time. Wanting to care, but not knowing how. And whenever someone would catch on, she'd pull a smile and say everything was fine because it was, right?

Everything was fine. Everything was _just _fine.

She could tell herself this once her arm started stinging again. A small burning, only over her wrists, like her body was trying to pull itself together. As much as it hurt, it still felt good. Out of all the pain she'd ever known, this was most certainly best. Better than the pain inside her mind, at least.

One by one, horizontal lines growing across the creamy skin of her arms. The sun always set beyond the horizon. Maybe her problems could disappear behind her own horizons. Sometimes she would take her thumb and lightly graze it across her flesh, and she would end up smearing the blood all up and down her arm, almost as if she were painting a picture.

She could take a deep breath and lean her head against the wall, wiping her sleeve across her face and dabbing at the mascara that had spilled onto her cheeks. She was calmer now.

Silence. For a long moment. She closed her eyes and pretended that she was somewhere other than her room, heeding no attention to the throbbing in her wrist. Pretending that she was at home. Not the Hermitage, not the factory with her father in his lab coat, but at _home. _With her doll and her mother and with no sign of wolves or men dressed in black. Everything was okay. But in her daze, in her moment of silence and the absent-mindedness that she'd forced upon herself, she'd neglected the fact her phone was buried under her covers and buzzing.

She didn't have enough time to register that someone had knocked on her door and called her name before it clicked open. Now the only thing she felt was fear. She started shaking, sweating even, with her heart racing so much she felt light-headed. The only thing she had time to do was yank her sleeve down and cover the flesh, with the wound that was quickly drying up clinging to the threads of her jacket. She stood there, nervously, her hand clamped over her wrist, and he looked awfully confused once he slid through the door. Maybe she looked too nervous. Maybe she was too pale and maybe her heart was beating too fast. She was going to have a hard time pulling this off.

There was a lot of tension in the room, a lot of staring. He looked scared, too. Why would he be scared?

He muttered something, but she couldn't hear over the voices in her head, cursing her for not locking the door. _Always lock the door. Always lock the damn door._

"Aelita?"

She tried smiling. "Hmm?"

"Are you okay?" Déjà vu. She'd heard that so many times before. People always asking if she was okay, if everything was alright. Should she be irritated or should she be glad someone cared? She didn't know. She was still way too focused on the fact she had failed to lock the door, like the gullible little idiot she was, and that she needed to get him out of that room as quickly as she could. So she said that she was fine.

She wasn't a very good liar. He took a cautious step towards her, but that one little step brought him close enough to see the makeup smeared under her eyes and after that he wasn't leaving. She took a deep breath—or at least, she tried to—but it was rather shaky, and she was doing her best not to break down right in front of him from the sheer anxiety. He looked anxious, too, and she was trying to figure out why that was.

"What's wrong?" His voice was rather hushed. She felt frozen. He took another step towards her, approaching her with hesitancy as if she were stray cat in an ally. She was giving off a strong vibe of…danger, almost. Like an invisible fence surrounded her, rippling with electricity, and if he stepped any closer he'd be fried. He examined her, read her expression and how white her cheeks had gone, when they were usually as rosy as the color of her hair. Whatever was wrong, it was in the room. It was screaming in his ears.

It didn't take long for him to glance down and see the way she was clutching her wrist, in a way that alerted him she was hiding something. And this vibe she was giving off only furthered his suspicions—that she _was _hiding something. Because there was never this much tension and she never looked this… _horrified. _

She didn't want him around because she had something to hide from him. He could see that much. And _she _could see that he kept glancing down at her wrist. Back to her eyes for brief moments, and then always back to her hand that kept tightening its grip without her even thinking.

Another thing he could see—very clearly, in fact, was that her denim jacket was blue…but the blotch below her hand, spreading so quickly that she couldn't possibly cover it all up, was red. Very red, in fact. That was when his heart sank inside his chest and he locked his eyes on her, asking to take a look at her hand.

"No." She snapped, without a thought. All it did was raise suspicion, and as he approached her she kept backing away. Now his heart was beating faster than hers.

"Aelita…"

"No!"

She turned around, frantically tried to pull away, but to no avail. He had already grabbed her arm, already seen the stains that had been hiding under her fingers and already pulled up the sleeve. He'd already seen the lines on her skin and the drops of red, the hints of irritation and the scars.

He stared at her wrist for a long while, his mouth parted slightly with shock.

"What did you do?" he asked, quietly.

She didn't answer. Her lips quivered as she desperately tried to keep herself from screaming, looking at her wrist with him. It was disgusting. That was all she saw, that was all she was.

"Aelita. What did you do."

It didn't sound like a question the second time. It felt like a demand. An order. His voice was louder, and it only kept growing louder. When he looked back up at her, he seemed angry. He _should_ be angry. She was angry, too. With herself. For being the piece of scum that she was.

He was shaking his head at her. "Jesus, Aelita, are you _crazy!?"_

And then she lost it. She rapidly nodded her head, as if she were agreeing with him, tears splashing onto her cheeks and flowing downwards, dripping from her chin. Her body shook with her sobs and all she could do was fall against the wall behind her, sliding back onto the floor where she belonged. The blood was still running down her arm, he could see it when she tried to cover her face with her hands.

He didn't know what to do. What _did _one do in a situation like this? So he kept asking questions. How long had this been going on? And he hadn't realized? How long had she been feeling so low, that she felt this was her only option? That this was the right thing to do? He was asking too many things for even him to process, and she was on the floor, screaming and trembling because he'd called her crazy and that was the last thing she needed.

And she was apologizing. Over and over and over again, in between her hiccups and her sobs, she was _apologizing. _For herself. For the horrible person she was. For harming herself and for isolating herself, for being as stupid and pathetic and as worthless as she was. Maybe if she apologized he'd stop talking. He'd stop yelling and demanding answers she didn't have and he would leave her alone like she wanted to be.

_This is why you lock the fucking door, Aelita. _

He had shut up. And she sat on the floor, her wails filling the dead silence of the room and her cheeks burning red from embarrassment because she was so, _so _ashamed. She wanted him to leave; she wished that returns to the past would work on them so that this could have never happened. As soon as his voice stopped, she felt something against her shoulder. She didn't have the energy to resist, and she wasn't sure she even cared. Again with the apathy. She felt herself being gently pulled into him. _Gently. _He didn't grab her, didn't force her, he just slowly knelt down by her side and let his arm hesitantly fall around her until she collapsed into his own embrace. It only made her cry harder. But he didn't say anything anymore, his words hadn't done any good and there wasn't anything he could say anyway. There wasn't anything he could do. She was hurting, and he couldn't stop her from doing the things she had done, and there was no need to lecture her or make her feel ridiculed.

So she sat in his arms and cried, and cried and cried, and he softly shushed in her ears and rocked her back and forth, telling her that it was okay.


End file.
